Forward-deployed engineer

What does a forward-deployed engineer do?

A forward-deployed engineer builds working software inside a customer's business.

You sit close to the people who use the product, learn how they work, and ship integrations, automations and AI features that fit that process.

In Singapore, the role appears at AI and software vendors, consultancies and in-house innovation teams. You usually report to an engineering, solutions or delivery head, and you spend much of the week with the customer's operations and IT staff.

You work with product managers, backend engineers, data teams and account managers. What you learn on site feeds back into the product plan that the product team owns.

What the work involves

• Run discovery calls with customer teams to map how work is done today and where it stalls.
• Write Python code that connects customer systems through APIs and moves data between them.
• Build and test AI agents and LLM-based workflows on the customer's real documents and tickets.
• Set up small backends, such as Supabase or Firebase projects, for prototypes and internal tools.
• Demo progress, take feedback, and report status to the customer sponsor and your own manager.
• Log bugs and feature gaps for the product team, and fix issues after launch.

Pay in Singapore

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Skills a forward-deployed engineer needs

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Forward-deployed engineer job description

We are hiring a forward-deployed engineer to build and launch AI and software solutions at customer sites across Singapore.

You will meet customers, scope their problems, write production code in Python, and connect large language model APIs to the systems they already use. The role suits an engineer who is comfortable working directly with clients.

Responsibilities

• Run discovery calls and workshops to understand customer processes, data and goals.
• Turn customer problems into a scoped plan with clear deliverables and a delivery timeline.
• Build integrations between customer systems and our product using REST APIs and webhooks.
• Design, build and test LLM-based features and AI agents on customer data.
• Set up evaluation sets and monitoring so you can measure output quality after launch.
• Prototype quickly with tools such as Supabase, Firebase and AI coding assistants like Claude Code.
• Handle customer data safely and follow the customer's security and Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) requirements.
• Give regular updates to customer sponsors and manage expectations on scope and risk.
• Pass product gaps and customer feedback to product and engineering teams with clear examples.
• Support customer teams after go-live with fixes, handover notes and training.

Requirements

• Degree in computer science, engineering or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Typically 1 to 4 years in software engineering, solutions engineering, data engineering or technical consulting.
• Strong Python and experience building and consuming REST APIs.
• Hands-on work with LLM APIs, including prompt design, structured outputs and simple evaluation.
• Clear spoken and written English, and the ability to explain technical points to non-technical people.
• Willingness to work at customer offices in Singapore and sometimes at short notice.

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Forward-deployed engineer career path

Singapore has no single official ladder for this role.

The steps below are common titles, moving from hands-on delivery towards leading customer engineering teams.

1. Associate forward-deployed engineer

   Entry

   You build integrations and prototypes under guidance, join customer calls as a note-taker and technical support, and learn the product.

2. Forward-deployed engineer

   Mid

   You own a customer project from discovery to launch, write most of the code and are the customer's main technical contact.

3. Senior forward-deployed engineer

   Senior

   You lead complex or high-risk deployments, set technical designs, and coach newer engineers on delivery and customer handling.

4. Forward-deployed engineering lead

   Lead

   You manage a small team and several customer accounts, and decide how work is scoped, staffed and reviewed.

5. Head of customer engineering

   Head

   You set delivery standards for the whole function, work with product and sales heads, and are accountable for customer outcomes.

The titles are ones commonly used in Singapore; employers may name the levels differently.

Related jobs and their pay

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Forward-deployed engineer interview questions

We wrote these questions from the skills this job needs. They are not an official question bank.

1. A customer's order system has a REST API with pagination and rate limits. How would you write a Python job that syncs orders to another system?

   What a good answer covers

   • Handles authentication and stores secrets outside the code
   • Follows pagination and respects rate limits with retries and backoff
   • Makes writes idempotent so a rerun does not create duplicates
   • Logs failures and raises alerts for records that cannot sync
   • Adds tests using sample responses

2. When would you use a webhook instead of polling an API?

   What a good answer covers

   • Webhooks push events as they happen and cut needless calls
   • Polling is simpler when the source has no webhook support
   • Verify webhook signatures and respond quickly
   • Handle duplicate and out-of-order events
   • Keep a fallback poll to catch missed events

3. Walk me through using an LLM API to extract fields from supplier invoices into JSON.

   What a good answer covers

   • Defines a clear schema and asks for structured output
   • Uses low temperature and clear instructions with examples
   • Validates output in Python and retries or flags failures
   • Builds a labelled test set of real invoices to measure accuracy
   • Routes low-confidence results to a person for review

4. How do you reduce wrong answers when an assistant answers questions from a customer's internal documents?

   What a good answer covers

   • Retrieves relevant passages and passes only those to the model
   • Asks for citations that point to the source text
   • Tells the model to say when the answer is not in the documents
   • Tests with a set of known questions and tracks results over time
   • Adds human review for high-risk answers

5. What is an AI agent, and when would you choose a fixed workflow instead?

   What a good answer covers

   • An agent loops: the model picks a tool, sees the result and decides the next step
   • Fixed workflows suit tasks with known steps and give predictable cost and speed
   • Agents suit open-ended tasks where the path varies
   • Explains risks: loops, wrong tool calls, higher cost and latency
   • Starts simple and adds autonomy only where it pays off

6. How would you test and monitor an agent that can update records in a customer's CRM?

   What a good answer covers

   • Writes test cases covering normal, edge and adversarial inputs
   • Limits tools to the minimum permissions needed
   • Caps the number of steps and the spend per run
   • Requires human approval for risky actions such as deletes
   • Logs each tool call so you can trace and replay failures

7. You need a prototype backend in a week. How would you choose between Supabase and Firebase?

   What a good answer covers

   • Supabase uses Postgres, which suits relational data and SQL queries
   • Firebase uses a document database with strong real-time and mobile support
   • Compares authentication, access rules and row-level security
   • Considers where data is hosted and the customer's data requirements
   • Considers how easily the prototype can move to the customer's own stack

8. How do you use Claude Code in your work, and how do you check what it produces?

   What a good answer covers

   • Gives it clear context and works in small, reviewable tasks
   • Reads every diff before accepting changes
   • Runs tests and linting before committing
   • Keeps secrets and customer data out of prompts and repositories
   • Knows when to write the code by hand

1. In your first discovery call, an operations manager says, 'We want AI for our back office.' What do you ask?

   What a good answer covers

   • Asks which task costs the most time or causes the most errors
   • Asks the manager to walk through one case from start to finish
   • Asks about the systems, data and people involved
   • Asks what a good result would look like and how it would be measured
   • Checks for blockers such as approvals, data access and security

2. The demo is tomorrow morning and your agent fails on a real customer document. What do you do?

   What a good answer covers

   • Reproduces the failure and finds the cause before changing anything
   • Fixes the cause and adds the document to the test set
   • Checks that the fix has not broken other cases
   • Tells the customer early if the scope of the demo must change
   • Prepares a fallback, such as a recorded run or a narrower demo

3. Sales promised a customer a feature the product does not have. The customer now expects it next month. What do you do?

   What a good answer covers

   • Confirms what was actually promised and by whom
   • Checks effort and options with the product and engineering teams
   • Offers a workaround or smaller first release if one exists
   • Talks to the customer sponsor honestly about what is possible
   • Records the decision and the risks in writing

1. Tell me about a time you explained a technical limit to someone who did not want to hear it.

   What a good answer covers

   • Describes the situation and the person's goal
   • Uses plain words and an example instead of jargon
   • Offers options along with the limit
   • Shows how the person responded and what was agreed
   • Reflects on what you would do differently

2. Describe a project you delivered when the requirements were unclear at the start.

   What a good answer covers

   • Explains how you narrowed the problem through questions and small prototypes
   • Shows how you agreed on scope with the people involved
   • Describes how you handled changes during delivery
   • States the outcome with a concrete result
   • Names what you learned about asking questions earlier

1. A Singapore customer wants to send customer records, including NRIC numbers and phone numbers, to an LLM API hosted overseas. What do you raise?

   What a good answer covers

   • Checks the purpose and consent for using the data under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)
   • Asks whether the data is needed at all, or can be masked or removed first
   • Reviews rules for transferring personal data outside Singapore
   • Reviews the provider's data retention and training terms
   • Involves the customer's data protection officer and records the decision

2. You are deploying an AI assistant at a bank in Singapore. What extra questions do you ask compared with a retail customer?

   What a good answer covers

   • Asks about the bank's technology risk and outsourcing requirements under Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) guidance
   • Asks which environments, data locations and cloud services are approved
   • Expects security reviews, audit trails and change approvals before go-live
   • Plans for human oversight and a clear way to turn the system off
   • Allows extra time for the customer's risk and compliance sign-off

Common questions about a forward-deployed engineer job

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